Personal Skills Audit

Digital Technology:

Skills Acquired: Final Cut, iMovie, Photoshop, Garageband, LiveType, Digital Camera, Video Studio
How these skills contributed to project: Made the project look professional by having effects like making the film black and white to suit the film noir genre and putting titles on to have the film's title and some of the cast on the film. You can also put a soundtrack on the film which is helpful and obviously the digital cameras can help you to shoot scenes in high quality.
How I will develop these skills in A2: I will aim to use more programs when creating the project, so that my skills can be extended and I will have a wider range to use.

Post Production:

Skills Acquired: Final Cut, LiveType, Photoshop
How these skills contributed to the project: I could edit the films length and speed so that I could make the film exactly as it needed to be. I could also add specific titles in the fonts that I wanted and that I thought would work best with the scenes and the genre.
How I will develop these skills in A2: I will use the techniques that I had previously learned to a much higher standard so that it can look very professional and a god interpretation of the tasks that I have been set.

Research and Planning:

I analysed the opening of similar films and looked in depth at current film noirs, for example LA Confidential. This helped me to get a better understanding of the topics and gave me some good ideas as to what I could use in the film that I was trying to construct. I also created an animatic storyboard which went along with a voiceover so that we had a visual interpretation of what we wanted to do. This helped us to see what the final product would look like. I also used a 9 frame analysis and call sheets which also helped with the research and the call sheets ensured that people were at the correct places when they needed to be for shoots. I can develop these skills in A2 by doing a lot more research into the topics as this year I have 3 tasks to do, not just 1. This mesans there needs to be a lot higher quality and quantity of research and it all needs tro be relevant to the topics and genre, which I will select.

Conventions of real media texts: I looked at current film noirs to gain ideas as to what I could use in the finished product. As mentioned above I looked at LA Confidential, but also at more modern Film Noir hybrids like Seven. I looked at film openings of different genres so that I could find out what real films used to make them look professional. They helped me in my task by giving ideas for things like colour schemes, layouts, costumes, other mise-en-scene and lighting. It also gave us ideas on how to build a storyline in a short amount of time, which helped us because we didn't have a lot of time to film and/ or show our part of the film. In the A2 year I intend to do a lot more research into the genres which I need to, so that I can do a lot more detailed and concise product at the end of the year.

Creativity: In our product last year we stuck to a lot of conventions and this was because we felt it was the best way to portray in the correct light and ensure that people could easily realise it was a film noir. We did add our own creative elements by changing parts of the genre and challenging the media conventions. This made it a unique film noir and helped us to create our own sort of hybrid which would have helped us to attract a wider audience had it been an actual film. This helped us to portray our media product in a modern way and meant that it didn't look dated and worn out. This meant that we were okay with using old fashioned things in the film without it looking like a bad quality. In the A2 year I intend to try and challenge more conventions so that I can use my own creativity on the product and make it unique and have my own spin on it.